A journey down the rabbit hole of Rubik's-style puzzles

Having read a bunch of tutorials online and watched a couple dozen on youtube, I decided to throw one together myself. I had just started the transition from the Beginner’s Method to F2L (First 2 Layers). Under the former, after forming the bottom face cross, you fill in the bottom layer corners with R U R’ and L’ U’ L. Then, you attack the middle layer edge pieces with a slightly more complicated algorithm. Both steps are relatively easy and require little memorization or concentration. But they are also inefficient. F2L, by contrast, solves both the bottom layer corners and middle layer edges simultaneously. It does so by forming pairs in the top layer and then placing those pairs into the 4 slots comprised of the bottom layer corners and middle edges. It takes a little more concentration and thought, but is far more efficient in the end.

As I struggled to learn the technique (mostly through Badmephisto’s cheat sheet and videos), it occurred to me that there is no better way to master something than being forced to teach it yourself. So, I stepped out of my comfort zone and began. (If you think that this was just a thinly veiled excuse to play with a helmet cam, you’re right. A sample was laying around my office, and I couldn’t resist.) I have to admit that it felt more than a bit cocky to assume that I was in any position — the lowly month-old cuber stuck at 1:15 solves — to add anything to the solid corpus of work already out there. But this was more for me than for anyone else. It forced me to systematize and organize the techniques in my head.

With nothing further ado, here is the tutorial in two parts:

NOTICE: I don’t know what happened, but these videos are no longer available. Sorry. (video 1 | video 2)